(I'm already hearing Leo say, "Told you so" since Hampton Inn got him ARRESTED! but . . .) I book two adjoining non-smoking double rooms two months ago and pay in full in advancel, using my Hilton Honor's reward membership.
Today we arrive to be told, "Sorry we don't have any adjoining rooms available." Well what am I supposed to do put my 11, 9 and 4 year old in a hotel room DOWN THE HALL?!?
Apparently, because Hampton Inn has no solution. So what do we get? One double room and One King Bed Room with a sleeper sofa. The only workable solution is to put all FIVE of us in the King Room (the three boys in the King bed and Shelby and I on the sleeper sofa) and leave the other room that is paid for COMPLETELY EMPTY!
Also, the room we are in is a SMOKING room and you can tell as soon as you walk in. Needless to say, we're not satisfied. HAMPTON INN doesn't care. I called the Customer Service for my HHonors program. The first thing I'm told is that adjoining rooms are "requests" and not guarantees" I don't really care, "you have a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and I'm not satisfied." Plus, the desk clerk started to put is in adjoining rooms 231 and 229 and then realized there was already someone in ONE OF THEM! Now, tell me this, if you KNOW someone is coming to your hotel who has "requested" adjoining rooms, why do you put someone in only ONE of a pair of adjoining rooms?
Next I'm told that they can accomodate our "request" at another Hotel, but we'd have to pay for BOTH because our current rooms are, "NON-REFUNDABLE AND NON-MODIFIABLE" to which I responded, "Well YOU modified them." Which was followed up by some type of scripted crap which I hung up on.
Hampton Inn claims 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, I'm not satisfied, but I'm not done yet.
FOLLOW UP: The pool was nasty (hair balls) the day we arrived and closed for the entirety of our stay. The internet went down for the final three days of our four night stay. Upon departure I asked the desk clerk what we needed to do about our stay since Hampton has a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. I was given a form to fill out and told it would be taken care of.
About a month later I called to follow up and was told there was a new manager and she would be contacting me shortly. After a week or so of phone tag, Faye, the new manager told me she had already initiated a complete refund of our stay and I should be receiving it shortly.
Three weeks later, still having received no refund and my calls to "Faye" not being returned, I called Hampton Corporate Customer service. April was very nice an apologetic and promised swift resolution. I provided a bank statement of the charges via fax.
Today I email April and ask if she got my fax. (For some reason the PDF I emailed her didn't get to her):
Dear Mr. Worsham,
The process of your refund has begun and we will be able to refund one night’s room and tax for this stay. I do apologize for the experience you had at this property."
What? One Room? One Night? We were stuck and paid for TWO crappy rooms for FOUR nights? It's not like the pool was only closed for one night, It's not that the internet was only down for one night. We weren't stuck in a stinking smoking room for only one night.
It would be different if we'd been offered the opportunity to not stay there and go somewhere else, but I paid in advance and upon arrival and advising corporate of the problems I was basically told, "TOO BAD, we're not giving you a refund"
Had we been given the option to cancel our stay and go elsewhere a one-night refund might be reasonable, but we were not. We were told that we had to pay for these nasty rooms in a nasty hotel whether we used them or not.
